Honda Dream Drive
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As a Senior Agile Software Engineer, I was on the team that developed Honda Dream Drive for Android Auto and an accompanying mobile application using the Kotlin programming language and NLP technologies. Honda Dream Drive is a suite of apps (for both the driver and passenger) based on the “In-Vehicle Payment” and “Dream Drive” concepts announced at CES 2017.
Honda Dream Drive is a suite of apps (for the driver, and for the passenger) based on the “In-Vehicle Payment” and “Dream Drive” concepts announced at CES 2017.1
The driver can make restaurant reservations and share the car’s location with others. It’s working with a bunch of companies on this, like Chevron, Grubhub, Parkopedia and Yelp.2
Driver & Passenger
Honda Dream Drive: Driver
Honda Dream Drive: Driver is a driver-focused application that allows the customer to make restaurant reservations, and pay for goods and services like fuel, movie tickets and parking, all from the car’s navigation system.
Honda Dream Drive: Passenger
Honda Dream Drive: Passenger offers mixed reality games that move with the car, as well as entertainment such as movies, from the passenger’s mobile device.
Powered by Voice
The driver experience uses a proprietary voice-controlled user interface, with a custom agent based on Google Dialog Flow technology. That allowed Honda to use “Hana” as its invocation word, instead of Siri or OK Google. It has a smaller universe of recognized commands, but they are geared toward driving situations. That makes it better for driving than some other voice services.
While driving, you can use your voice to search, make reservations on services like Yelp, order and purchase takeout from the nearest restaurant, or find the cheapest price for gas in your surroundings. You can say, “OK Hana, find parking.” The system then looks for parking garages near the destination you’re driving to.3
For details on Honda’s development efforts with its partners, see “Honda Dream Drive to Deliver Next-Generation Infotainment, Commerce, Services and Rewards to Drivers and Passengers” (press release). Honda is also seeking more partners to develop road-ready applications.
References
1 Honda Dream Drive, by Honda Innovations
2 CNET — Honda Dream Drive lets you buy and consume all the things from your car, by Andrew Krok
3 VentureBeat — Honda Dream Drive — hands-on with a prototype for car infotainment, by Dean Takahashi
